By Jonathan Stankiewicz
The Instructional Design and Technology Resource Center here at CCSU has been busy helping faculty get courses ready during the summer and is ready for the Fall semester.
The Center, as it’s known, opened last year to help faculty successfully integrate technology into their courses and students with multimedia questions, said Instructional Design Manager Sherry Pesino.
And now with the Fall 2011 semester starting up The Center will be able to accommodate more students and faculty from designing online courses to learning and using new software.
Located in the basement of Willard Hall, The Center isn’t in the greatest location, said Pesino. But being located in an academic building and next to two others, Pesino is optimistic that there will be traffic.
“We want to see that all faculty get the support they need to integrate technology into their coursework, successfully,” said Pesino. “Anyone can click on the teaching station [in Blackboard] and say that they are integrating technology, but having students coursework improve because they are using technology is different.”
Offering computers that use Windows and Macintosh platforms, The Center allows for students and faculty to learn about and use software products from Microsoft Office to Adobe Flash. It has a classroom to facilitate a 10 seat workshop and conference space for webinars. Students and faculty can also edit video using iMovie or Adobe Creative.
The Center caters to people looking for help in Blackboard Vista, online course development, scanning documents, website editing, and other technologies.
In the beginning of the year, it’s pretty busy as students are working through their courses and online course design with faculty, said Pesino. With faculty The Center is steady year round.
And as demand increases more staff for The Center is being considered.
“It’s a long-term goal to ultimately hire additional staff,” said Scott Erardi, Director of Academic Technology. “I do think that it’s a little understaffed right now and hopefully we are going to be able to address that going forward.”
Erardi admitted that it will be tricky to hire people in the future with the current budget changes, but added that The Center hours could expand to cover more time if the need is there for help.
If students want peace and quiet from the Marcus White Annex computer lab, The Center provides that resource to students, said Erardi.
“At the student center you can work collaboratively, but you don’t have access to the technology,” said Pesino, “unless you have laptops for everyone you are sitting with.”
The Center provides that multimedia exposure with new Mac computers, chairs, tables, and a new flat screen TV.
“We worked really hard to design and decorate The Center,” Pesino said.
Pesino doesn’t want students coming in to write term papers, but students do have the ability to sit at multiple computers, use the tables for collaboration, record presentations, and ask questions.
They encourage walk-ins, but if you really need help make an appointment, said Pesino. The Center’s website offers a one-on-one workshop schedule that can guarantee time with someone from The Center.
“If you come in-between classes and don’t have an appointment we may all be busy and won’t be able to help you,” Pesino said. “I don’t think we are seeing the volume we could be.”
Last semester, The Center was able to help pyschology professor Marianne Fallon, Ph.D., while she was on maternity leave both at her home and in the hospital. Using Adobe Connect, and with the help of The Center, Fallon and her class were able to do their final presentations live.
“Students would come in and do their presentation,” Fallon said. “I could see their slides and media and ‘be there’ not speaking, but by chat and make comments and such.”
The students were nervous at first though, but they got used to it pretty quick, said Fallon.
The Center also offers ProfCast, the ability of faculty to record presentations or lectures and put them online for students, classroom collaborations, a way for classes to come down and learn about technology.
Management professor Chet Labedz has used the recording studio in The Center since Fall 2010 to record his course lectures in Human Resource Management.
“I was responding a bit to the frustration of falling behind due to weather-driven class cancellations,” Labedz said. “I wanted to shift the use of in-class time from my delivery of technical content to students participating in content application.”
Besides some software limitation in the ProfCast application Labedz appreciates what they provide.
“The recording studio is quiet and it has good hardware,” Labedz said. “What more could an artist want?”
Later this week, they will be teaching a history class about social networks, blogging, and Google Docs.
“The students will be learning other technical skills, such as digitization, tagging and metadata, podcasting, and exhibit building using the open source program Omeka,” said history professor Heather Prescott.
Prescott and her class will be using the small classroom provided in The Center.
“It’s really the only place on campus where I can do this,” said Prescott. “The facilities are the best and there is staff on hand when the Center is open to help me and the students. It also is nicely designed and well appointed.”
For faculty on campus, going to The Center isn’t mandatory, at all.
“We cannot make them come to us,” said Pesino.
Though, The Center offers an instructional design program for faculty teaching a fully online course, said Pesino. Faculty are able to go down and meet with the team and tell us their content, have a discussion about their objectives, and how they are going to teach and build the course around that.
“We offer the training customized to them [the faculty] and what they are doing,” said Jennifer Nicoletti, Instructional Media Coordinator at The Center. “I think they have to want to come down here and spend the time.”
Erardi and The Center will ensure that faculty understand what they are doing completely.
“We will show you how to do it and we’ll work with you,” Erardi said. “We don’t just let you loose. There is a constant communication there; we work with you continually throughout the semester.”
For any questions about The Center you can call at (860)832-2081, email at [email protected], and visit their website at www.ccsu.edu/idtrc.
Follow The Center on Twitter @TheCenterCCSU.
